Aadhaar; All You Need To Know

Aadhaar was made mandatory for everything as it serves two major objectives. They are as follows:

· Robust enough to eliminate duplicate and fake identities

· Can be verified and authenticated in an easy, cost-effective way

Though the government made it mandatory to link mobile numbers along with KYC details with Aadhaar, the Supreme Court has ruled it out the order to link mobile numbers with Aadhaar. It has been reported that over 80 percent of bank accounts and 60 percent of mobile connections have been linked with national biometric identifier Aadhaar. To weed out the unaccounted wealth, it has also made mandatory to link income-tax permanent account number or PAN with that of Aadhaar.

According to a Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) official, of the 109.9 crore banks accounts, almost 87 crores have been seeded with Aadhaar. Of this, 58 crores have already been verified while in case of the rest, the authentication process is underway the documents that have been submitted to the banks. This move claims that all the financial losses caused to banks and genuine account holders through identity frauds will be curbed.

Linking Aadhaar to all government and private services gives the government access to large amount of data which it can use in the name of ‘national security’. The government refused to define the scope of “national security”, which means it has all the power to access anyone’s data without any judicial oversight.

Although, a five-judge Constitution bench is hearing a bunch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar. as things stand today, PAN, bank accounts, credit cards, insurance policies, mutual funds, pension plans and social welfare benefits had to be linked to Aadhaar by the end of the March.

Having everything linked to a single ID makes it vulnerable to misuse as privacy is a threat. While considering the rural population, Aadhaar linkage remains both difficult and tricky. In Aadhaar act, there are no provisions for the protection of one's information. Apart from that, data stored is vulnerable to cyber theft. So safeguarding all the private data of millions must be the priority of the government. Otherwise, the consequences will be fractious.